Lair of the Crystal Fang: An Arkham Horror Novel

I really like this series, and SA Sidor's books are some of the best in the series.

That said, this one is a bit confusing, there are way too many bad guys. It does clean up nicely though in the end. Getting there is tough, though, as there are few revelations, little progress for our intrepid adventurers, but mostly dead ends and red herrings.

I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
During a modernization of Arkaham’s sewers, a discovery is found: a large pink crystal fang. Now the mayor has to figure out how to restart the infrastructure project that he has hanged his re-election campaign on. A set of comrades recovering from the trauma from their previous adventure are being dragged into the mystery due to a series of bizarre coincidences. Stalking them all is a serial killer who calls himself the Lamprey, and he has a monstrous goal behind his brutal murders.
This story is pure pulp and I love it. It reads like a story you could have found in an old pulp magazine from the 1920s or 1930s. The style is spot on. The characters are adventurers show more with mysterious histories. The bizarre is rarely explained and there’s always a sense of the unknown. I found myself wanting to read just one more chapter to find the answer to what exactly is happening.
However, it does start rather slowly. It takes a bit for the main protagonists to arrive on the page and even longer for the storylines to converge. Even by the end, one of the storylines feels only tangentially related to the overarching plot surrounding the crystal fang. Yet, this didn’t detract from the story. Instead, it helped make the world of Arkham feel more fleshed out.
Also, as a fan of the board game, I appreciated all the Easter Eggs in it. The board game could serve as a map to this book. It was fun just finding all the references and I’ll have to go back over it again to see what I missed.
Definitely a must-read for anyone who loves the game Arkham Horror. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves pulp novels or Lovecraft-inspired novels without all the problematic elements. It was a great October read. show less

Within the larger franchise of Arkham Horror fiction, S. A. Sidor's novels have established their own serial continuity, starting with The Last Ritual and developing in Cult of the Spider Queen. Daniel Strange's cover art of this third installment Lair of the Crystal Fang shows three characters from the second book: Maude Brion, Jake Williams, and Andy Van Nortwick. These three are reunited in this tale, but they are not its only heroes. Returning the setting to Arkham allows Sidor to bring in a surfeit of other "investigators" from the Arkham Horror games. Urchin Wendy Adams, mayor Charlie Kane, and psychologist Carolyn Fern are also central to the story, and reporter Rex Murphy and researcher Mandy Thompson have important roles. Sidor show more seems to have realized that each such character appearing is a selling point in a piece of literature like this one.

A more general concept that this novel seems to have carried over from the Arkham Horror card game is the basic emphasis on trauma. Jake's physical trauma from the South American adventure of the previous book includes what would be a Weakness card in the game: Leg Injury. Maude is definitely suffering from mental trauma.

Stylistically, this volume was a bit inferior to its predecessors. "Unpindownable" (50) would be all right in contemporary 21st-century humor, but it's a clinker in pulp era horror. I was similarly put off by "torpefy" (131) and several other word choices and phrasings in the course of the book. As before, Sidor managed to strike a mid-point between weird horror and pulp action that is consistent with the mood of the games (as contrasted with Yog-Sothothery more generally).

The Lair of the Crystal Fang plot centers on the Arkham sewers, and it features a serial killer, witches, and gangsters. It moves along at a brisk pace with short chapters and frequent changes of focus. I wasn't blown away by anything here, but it was an adequate addition to this now-sprawling set of game-based horror books. show less